Goals

Goals are the outcome anchors of an initiative — the high-level measures of success that every focus area should contribute to.

Goals are the high-level outcomes an initiative is trying to achieve. They sit above focus areas — where focus areas describe what will be built, goals describe why it matters and how success is measured.

Goals vs results

Results (in focus areas) are technical and specific — they describe observable system behavior. Goals are broader and business-oriented — they describe the impact the initiative should have.

A goal for a notifications initiative might be: "Users don't miss time-sensitive clarifications that need their input." The results on individual focus areas are the technical specifications that prove that goal is met.

We intend goals to be logical segments of your projects and ideally should group focus areas into a common pattern that is easy to rationalise. E.g a homepage goal that describes the work focus' of creating the 'Homepage', shouldn't really include work on the 'Privacy Policy' (maybe).

This is all up to you of course.

Writing goals

Good goals are:

• Outcome-oriented — they describe impact, not output. "Users can configure notifications" is output. "Users stay informed without being overwhelmed" is outcome.
• Falsifiable — you should be able to tell, after shipping, whether the goal was met.
• Stable — goals shouldn't change during the build phase. If a goal changes, the initiative scope probably needs to change too.

How many goals

One to three goals per initiative is the right range. More than three suggests the initiative is trying to do too many unrelated things and should be split.

There are no enforced limits. Create as few or as many as your initiative reasonably needs to be clear and workable.